Haenyeo divers of Jeju Island

The women who stare at us so hauntingly and powerfully in the portraits are mostly aged in their 60s, 70s and 80s

Huyn Sukjik, Samdal, Jeju, 2017. Photographer Hyungsun Kim

Haenyeodivers of Jeju Island

The sea women of Korea

A photographic exhibition now showing at the museum celebrates a community of female divers known as haenyeo, or sea women, who sustainably harvest the seas around Jeju Island in the Republic of Korea. By Daina Fletcher.

HAENYEO: THE SEA WOMEN OF JEJU ISLAND features large-scale photographic portraits by Korean artist Hyungsun Kim that explore the human face of a centuries-old, sustainable sea harvest. The women who stare at us so hauntingly and powerfully in these images are mostly aged in their 60s, 70s and 80s. Incredibly, they have been free diving around Jeju Island all year round, in waters icy, warm, treacherous or calm, for 50 years or more. So who are these haenyeo women? And what is so compelling about their story? The haenyeo are communities of women who dive for hours at a time to harvest food from the sea floor. It is skilled, physical and dangerous work. The women dive to depths of 20 metres for up to two minutes, up to seven hours a day, 90 days a year, without the aid of an air tank or snorkel. They harvest prized abalone, conch, sea urchin, sea cucumber or octopus. During the seaweed harvest, they haul 60–70 kilogram bags of wet seaweed out of the water and along the rocks. The haenyeo live in seaside villages around the volcanic island of Jeju off the southern Korean peninsula. While their fame lies in their sea harvest, they also farm the volcanic soils to feed their families and communities and to trade and sell. It is a practice that has been passed from mother to daughter for generations. The earliest written reference to haenyeo harvesting abalone is in a work from 1629 by Lee Gun titled Jeju topography, but the practice is understood to be much older.1 By the 19th century, 22 per cent of Jeju’s female population were haenyeo.

2 The women work in fishing co-operatives in waters they call sea farms. There are about 100 co-operatives in Jeju and the smaller island of Udo nearby. Each sets the boundaries of the sea fields and regulates the size and sustainability of the catch. The women harvest species only when populations can support it over the course of the seasonal calendar. Abalone and conch are caught from October to June, sea urchins from May to July and sea slugs during winter.

The earliest written reference to haenyeo harvesting abalone is in a work from 1629, but the practice is understood to be much older

01 Haenyeo in the 1960s in traditional diving outfits and carrying knives at their waists. Photographer Seo Jae Chul. Courtesy Haenyeo Museum, Jeju Special Self-Governing Province

02 Her Kyungsuk, Hamo, Jeju, 2014. Photographer Hyungsun Kim

01

The seaweed harvest for different species during the year is collective, while the sea creatures can be sold individually. The women never dive alone, and clean the fishing grounds regularly to remove badangpul, a sea grass considered a weed. They donate funds from the sale of seaweeds to the community for school and other services.

The diving work is called muljil. It is skilled, physical and dangerous. Since 2009, 40 divers have died as a result of their work. Traditionally girls begin training aged eight, dive at 15 and are considered experienced by about 35. They progress through three levels: hagun, junggun and sanggun, when they are eligible to offer guidance to others. The elders, dae-sanggun, are leaders within the community and place a particular emphasis on safety and harmony. Haenyeo must know the sea, the sea floor, the tides, currents and winds of their sea farm, and the life cycles of the sea life in it, in addition to diving and breathing techniques. The women are noted for the sumbisori, the distinctive whistling sound – ‘ho-oi ho-oi’ – they make when they catch their breath at the surface, a combination of inhaling and exhaling. Tethered to their tewak, or buoy, they rest on the surface, store their harvest in its mangsari (suspended net bag) and dive again. It is often a long working day. The women’s gear is minimal. Traditionally haenyeo dived in cotton outfits tied at the sides to allow for ease of dressing. Adopting rubber wetsuits in the 1970s greatly changed their working lives. On the one hand, the insulation made them warmer; on the other, it meant extended diving hours each day, and more time in the freezing winter waters.3 Today haenyeo wear the simplest of wetsuits, cloth vests, a scarf or other form of head protection, goggles or a mask, fins and lead weights. To prevent overfishing they forbid the use of modern technology, carrying only hooks for abalone and knives for working the rocks.

The women dive to depths of 20 metres for up to two minutes, up to seven hours a day, 90 days a year

Haenyeo must know the sea, the seafloor, the tides, currents and winds of their sea farm, and the life cycles of the sea life in it

01 Ilchulbong [headland in background] and haenyeo, photographer Yang Paeng-chul. Winner of the Silver Prize, the 4th Jeju International Photo Contest 2012. Courtesy the photographer and Jeju Special Self-Governing Province 02 Sung Sunja, Daejeong, Jeju, 2015. Photographer Hyungsun Kim

01

02

The life of the haenyeo is governed by cultural tradition all year round. The spring season is launched after a ritual known as Yeongdeunggut from 1 February, when the community welcomes the wind deity Yeongdeung with prayers for safety and abundance. Miniature boats are launched into the waters as votive models. In summer, the spawning season, fishing for abalone and conch is banned and the divers instead catch sea urchin. When the ban is lifted, the conch harvest begins again. While these communities of haenyeo are both celebrated and enduring, the numbers in their collectives are dwindling as the women age. Jeju is a tourist island and many women choose other livelihoods or move to cities, while pollution and industrial-scale fishing are degrading their seas and reducing their catch. In the 1960s, 23,000 haenyeo dived and the women had economic value in a patriarchal society. Rather than a woman’s family paying a dowry when she wed, as in the rest of Korea, men had to pay to marry haenyeo. Today there are about 4,000 women who still practise underwater fishing, out of a population of 600,000 on Jeju Island. Remarkably, the average age of haenyeo in 2017 was about 75 – 88 per cent were over 60 and 57 per cent were aged 70 or older.4 Hyungsun Kim photographed these women at Jeju on several visits between 2012 and 2014. His powerful life-size portraits show these divers as more than a symbol of an ancient practice; their extraordinary lives in the sea are writ in every line and surface as each woman confronts the photographer’s lens after coming in from a dive, in a makeshift studio assembled on the shore using a sheet as a backdrop. There is no sea, there are no rocks – there is simply an extraordinary woman staring back at us after hours in the water.

The artist observes:5

They are shown exactly as they are, tired and breathless. But, at the same time, they embody incredible mental and physical stamina, as the work itself is so dangerous; every day they cross the fine line between life and death. I wanted to capture this extreme duality of the women: their utmost strength combined with human fragility.

Haenyeo: the sea women of Jeju Island opens at the museum on 8 March.

Touring exhibition produced by the Australian National Maritime Museum and the Korean Cultural Centre Australia with assistance from the Jeju Special Self-Governing Province. It has been supported by the Embassy of the Republic of Korea to commemorate the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Australia and the Republic of Korea in 2021. 1 K Markelova, ‘The haenyeo: living legends of Jeju Island’, en.unesco. org/courier/april-june-2017/haenyeo-living-legends-jeju-island, The UNESCO Courier April–June 2017 2 H K Chwa, C H Ko, C H Kwon et al, ‘Jeju haenyeo and Japanese ama’. Seoul: Minsokwon. 2005. Cited in Joo-Young Lee, Joonhee Park, Siyeon Kim, ‘Cold adaptation, aging, and Korean women divers haenyeo’, Journal of Physiological Anthropology, 8 August 2017. 3 Joo-Young Lee, Joonhee Park, Siyeon Kim, ‘Cold adaptation, aging, and Korean women divers haenyeo’, ibid, 8 August 2017. 4 Jeju Province. Annual report on the current state of oceans and fisheries in Jeju. Jeju Special Self-Governing Province, 2016 jeju. go.kr/, cited in Lee, Park and Kim, ibid. 5 designersparty.com/entry/Haenyeo-Hyungsun-Kim, accessed 8 February 2021.

Daina Fletcher is the museum’s Head of Acquisitions Development.